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blastboy writes "The potential upside to getting rid of drivers: 'Today car horns are still a leading source of noise pollution in urban centers. India's honking problem is so severe that the response to it—from both activists and government officials—mirrors the response to an actual epidemic. Officials in Peru, meanwhile, began treating honking like a serious crime in 2009, threatening to confiscate the cars of people who honk when they shouldn't.'"

I imagine that driverless cars will honk quite frequently, just to be on the safe side. They will be able to communicate silently to other car 2.0s but the old style drivers and the pedestrians will need warnings that there is a car that they might not be aware of.

Electric cars could eliminate noise pollution. What did our bright lawmaker mavens did? Legislate it so electric cars must play artificial noise, because someone might be jaywalking with a nose in their smartphone.

So I'd expect 50 years of the equivalent of having a person walk before the car waving a red flag before we can enjoy the benefits of new technologies.

Still, the car ought to be able to tell that someone is there, standing or walking toward the street.

After all, the noise was demanded because there were drivers in silent electric cars, and the cars had no smarts to tell them about their surroundings.Driver-less cars will have cameras and radars and should be able to make noise only when appropriate. Of course, appropriate means everywhere on a busy city street, so a huge racket thrown up by otherwise quiet cars.

To be fair, the only way for me to get to anywhere from my house by walking is by jaywalking. There's only a sidewalk on one side of the street and I'd be walking on the side of the road if I didn't cross straight in front of my house. In winter snowbanks stop me from walking on the lawns until I get to a safe crossing point. Also the road is curved, so its hard to see when cars are coming. I often use my ears, as well as my eyes to determine when cars are coming. Sound is probably the more important factor

Electric cars could eliminate noise pollution. What did our bright lawmaker mavens did? Legislate it so electric cars must play artificial noise, because someone might be jaywalking with a nose in their smartphone.

Or they might be blind, and really have no way to know that a silent car is approaching them. Or they might just be used to the idea that they can hear cars approaching, having never encountered a "ninja Prius" before.

The noise doesn't have to be loud, it only needs to be projected in front of the car, not everywhere, and it only has to operate when the car is going slow enough that its road noise isn't inaudible. This particular noise isn't going to bother anyone any more than the traditional engine nois

When the car is going slow enough that road noise isn't easily audible (bearing in mind that many blind people rely so much more heavily on their other senses that they can and often do notice sounds or vibrations that most other people could not), stopping distance is short enough that the driver can reasonably be responsible for avoiding an accident, even if the other person did not see him or his car.

Should we also force electric wheelchairs or scooters for disabled or elderly people to make more nois

You know what's really funny? Modern IC cars are so quiet that they did a study - for most conventional vehicles, not hybrids or EVs, road noise is the dominant factor. IE tire noise on the road, gravel crunching, all that. The EVs and hybrids they tested were identical on a Db level.

As speeds increase it simply shifts to wind noise - the engine being loud enough to be a signficant factor is actually the exception and generally indicates an ill-maintained defective vehicle.

Electric cars could eliminate noise pollution. What did our bright lawmaker mavens did? Legislate it so electric cars must play artificial noise, because someone might be jaywalking with a nose in their smartphone.

Well, electric cars are silent under 30kph or so. Above that, the dominant noise cars make is road noise caused by the tires rolling on asphalt.

Though, it's not even necessarily people paying attention - in a parking lot, the sound of starting engines usually indicates a car is coming out (you cou

The same argument was made every time a new generation of cars became more quiet than the previous one.
I do not fear that regulations will force cars to be louder than necessary, at least not for long.
Reason: People will get used to and appreciate quiet cars. Politicians will do so as well. And even if cars are forced to produce some noise - which I don't think will last for a long time - a more or less even humming is far more tolerable (at least to me) than the ugly whining of engines revving up and dow

Yeah, but it has no *style*. How about Hollywood-esque hovercar sounds? Or for the retro-inclined the sounds of a team of long-legged horses running on soft ground (because nobody wants to listen to a team of horses galloping down a cobblestone street). We could have a whole *palette* of soundscapes to play with as phttp://tech.slashdot.org/story/14/01/31/2331231/when-cars-go-driverless-what-happens-to-the-honking#eople got accustomed to the idea.

You're right, of course, but it's very limited in scope.
I actually hadn't thought of it, but now that you mention it, I still don't think it matters in terms of noise prevention.
Most vehicles are bought (I think/guess/believe) without giving a second thought (iaw shit) about the noise they cause.
They're bought because of price / space / availability / whatever. If that behaviour stays the same and cars overall get more quiet, there will be less noise. That's cool with me.
People who buy Harleys will co

My grandfather was left blind for reasons that were not related to his genetics, so natural selection is hardly at play, and even if it were, the fact is that the blind have just as much reason to want to know where cars are as you do. If I'm in a parking garage, I oftentimes hear cars before I see them, and the way that some of those drivers careen around corners, it oftentimes falls to me to keep myself safe from them, since they aren't looking out for me. And if I'm crossing the street at a crosswalk, ca

In this case, you don't need a honking horn, just, e.g., an audible engine-like rumble when cars are approaching intersections. I assume (hope) you don't lean on the horn every time you see a pedestrian at the corner. And, if a blind person is crossing, you should never have a need to honk --- you should have brought your car to a stop at the intersection and given pedestrians their right of way (not be caught unawares blasting through a stopsign). Self-driving cars will probably, on average, do a lot bette

I feel like this is the start of a bad joke, but the honest answer is "because they want to get to the other side". Blind people need to cross streets too, in case that thought hadn't occurred to you, and knowing if there is a car sitting at the corner that may be about to make a turn across the crosswalk they're using is something they may interested in knowing. Or they may want to know if a car is nearing them in a parking lot. There are plenty of reasons for a blind person to want to know where cars are

I imagine that driverless cars will honk quite frequently, just to be on the safe side. They will be able to communicate silently to other car 2.0s but the old style drivers and the pedestrians will need warnings that there is a car that they might not be aware of.

Liability worries will probably make that the norm.

Who will dare sell a car that does not give the same warning that a conscientious driver might?There will be people diving in front of driverless cars attempting to empty the deep pockets of the manufacturers.

In the US, at least, very few people actually honk as a measure of courtesy or to "warn" pedestrians. It's mostly to (rightfully) tell drivers not paying attention at a light to get off their phones/daydreams/whatever and GO or (wrongfully) in fits of road rage that often tends to end badly. Neither generally has much to do with safety.

Although I can imagine that driving in NYC is not a bad as India, the traffic gets pretty busy here. My driving algorithm is as follows: 1. Aways yeld to idiots and jackasses.2. Maneuver to avoid accidents, honking does not help much.

Very seldom, if someone fell asleep at the traffick light, I give it a very short blip.

If all horns were uninstalled tomorrow we would not loose much. Now let's discuss sirens and light pollution.

It is pure optimisation, actually. If you dangerously cut me off I can a) give way at the cost of 0.5 seconds of my time or b) slam that accelerator, which will result in either you reconsidering your driving habits or clipping a mirror and a body panel it is attached to. Given that you aready indicated a lack of mental capacity, there is a fat chance of spending the next hour waiting for police in your company.

... to stay on topic, I can also honk and be flipped a bird in exchange -- a mutual understandin

Sure there is... how else would you propose we signal, when the car just in front of us is driving at 10 miles per hour on a 30 mph road, when a pedestrian is taking too long to finish their crossing, a car in front of us is slowing down or taking too long to complete their right turn, or the car in front of us is stopped and signalling left in the middle of the road, spending forever at the stop sign, failing to take a right turn on red, stopping at a yellow light, failing to accelerate immediately

I would propose that you calm down and think that perhaps the person in front of your car is moving slower than you would like for a good reason.

Although it's always possible that they are purposely trying to make you late for your appointment, it's also possible that they need to think a moment more to avoid making a dangerous mistake. Or that slow moving pedestrian might be experiencing a bit of pain from the bullet that lodged in his leg back in the war and it might be slowing him down a little.

Sure there is... how else would you propose we signal, when the car just in front of us is driving at 10 miles per hour on a 30 mph road, when a pedestrian is taking too long to finish their crossing, a car in front of us is slowing down or taking too long to complete their right turn, or the car in front of us is stopped and signalling left in the middle of the road, spending forever at the stop sign, failing to take a right turn on red, stopping at a yellow light, failing to accelerate immediately after the light turned green, etc, etc.

In your driverless car, you won't even notice, you'll be too busy playing Angry Birds to see your surroundings.

When driverless cars are commonplace, a GPS outage will leave millions of drivers stranded away from home because they will no longer know how to get home on their own, not even if they are within walking distance. GPS is bad enough, but at least they generally know which roads they take, but when driverless cars are the norm, drivers won't pay attention at all to where they are going.

When driverless cars are commonplace, a GPS outage will leave millions of drivers stranded away from home because they will no longer know how to get home on their own

Wait.... GPS outage? If humans can find their way around without GPS; I see no reason a driverless car shouldn't be able to.

That's the problem - people are becoming reliant on GPS and can't find their way around without GPS. One of my coworkers has lived here for almost a year and can't find his way to a restaurant 3 miles away (that he's been to a dozen times) without GPS.

Hell... they can have a huge map database in the car.

All the car needs to do is use its last known position plus data from sensors and dead-reckoning based navigation to identify its current position.

Most Inertial sensors are only good for a short time before they become too inaccurate to use. Manufacturers could have the car use pattern mapping to match its surroundings with onboard maps, but when GPS available "all the time", why bother implementing some

There's not all that much honking in NYC since Adolf Giuliani had all the honkers arrested and sent to the South Bronx. But if I had a car accident every time I've honked my horn when someone was moving their car into the space my car occupied, I'd be pretty upset.

the purpose of the car horn was not to express anger at other drivers but to warn of an emergency. there will still be people dangerously stepping into the street and the cars will honk to warn them that they may get hit. that's not to say it will warn them only when they will be hit but rather when the probability of being hit drastically increases. pedestrians are highly unpredictable and the cars have been programmed to act accordingly. also, if someone in a manually driven car might be in the process of causing an collision (e.g. turning into an occupied lane) the car will honk.

the real question is if people will give other people the finger in traffic.

And by making fewer mistakes, driverless cars would elicit less honking from other drivers, except when they drive at or below the speed limit, which will be all the time. So it's hard to say what the overall result would be in the USA, at least until humans are banned, for safety concerns, from operating motor vehicles on public roads.

Ok, let's assume in this wondrous future, you are being driven (can't exactly call it driving if you're not in control) on some country roads and you encounter a very large bull standing in the middle of the road. Your car recognizes that there is an obstruction, stops and waits patiently for the road to clear. The bull waits patiently for the car to go away. Unless they've come up with automated cattle in the future you've got a problem. Since the car has no horn, you (the passenger) have to figure out a

Ok, let's assume in this wondrous future, you are being driven (can't exactly call it driving if you're not in control) on some country roads and you encounter a very large bull standing in the middle of the road.

This is why you should always, always bring firearms, flares, and some device to scare away bulls with you, when driving on country roads: especially in driverless cars --- never be without them.

When you encounter the bull, you load your gun with a blank.... fire off the warning.
This will su

I really wish I had the ability to make a more subdued honk sometimes, for alerting a pedestrian, or whatever. It seems like an obvious enhancement, and yet AFAIK such a thing has never been standard or even available, except maybe as an aftermarket item.

I really wish I had the ability to make a more subdued honk sometimes, for alerting a pedestrian, or whatever. It seems like an obvious enhancement, and yet AFAIK such a thing has never been standard or even available, except maybe as an aftermarket item.

Copied from the Citroën DS - it had the regular horn for in-town use, and a wake-the-dead horn for highway use.

And yes, if you accidentally hit the highway mega-horn when a little old lady was crossing the street in front of you, it was embarrasing.... not that I'd know that myself, of course, just heard rumours.

It is a tad surprising how many swear words a 90 year old lady actually knows.

In America, honking your car horn is an expression of anger. It is calling the other driver out that he is doing something unsafe or stupid. If someone doesn't move when a light turns green, you have to "bip" your horn by tapping lightly. A full-on honk might make the other driver get out and try to kick your ass.

Overseas, it's different. Honking the horn just says, "I'm here." It's an auditory announcement of where you are. This is very important, as other drivers frequently don't watch where they're going. When you pass, you need to honk the horn so the other driver doesn't suddenly decide to change lanes into your car. I ride an electric moped, and my electric piezo horn is my most important safety device other than the brakes. It announces my presence so people don't hit me. Taxis honk when they pass me - it doesn't mean they're mad, it just means "I'm here."

Say the people standing to make a lot of money from them (and their fanboys), yes. The problem is that reality tracking technology and heuristics are not even close to making a safe autonomous street robot. The clues are all about us in the non-critical technologies we have already, like voice recognition. It's been 20 years, and it still can't tell what someone's saying when the person has a cold, or even get it 99% correct in ideal conditions. it's slow too. Face recognition is getting slowly better,

Human train engineers make mistakes all the time. Just recently we've had two "going around the corner too fast" fatal incidents. Those are two accidents that would not have happened with a robot at the wheel. Now, you might be correct and the robots might be less able to react to "random" events - but then how rare are random events compared with engineers dozing off, spacing out, or showing up impaired? In any case, most systems still stick a guy up there, even if he doesn't drive the train under normal c

Human train engineers make mistakes all the time. Just recently we've had two "going around the corner too fast" fatal incidents. Those are two accidents that would not have happened with a robot at the wheel. Now, you might be correct and the robots might be less able to react to "random" events - but then how rare are random events compared with engineers dozing off, spacing out, or showing up impaired? In any case, most systems still stick a guy up there, even if he doesn't drive the train under normal circumstances... so that probably covers both cases. So sure, you still pay a driver, but you gain safety and you gain the ability to run trains closer together.. capacity.

I don't understand why we don't have driverless trains (aside from a few airport trains) today. It seems like such a simple problem - no need to steer (aside from negotiating track switches), well defined stop/go/speed signals that could easily be followed by an automated engineer, and far superior vision to detect obstacles on the tracks. Is there some other skill needed that only a human can provide?

Ludditism. Really, that's all. The first time a "driverless" vehicle kills someone, everyone will fight over who gets the blame. Everyone will be sued for billions. Even if it's something that has happened before, like a car trying to beat the train, missing and hitting the train.

Not really. Complete automation usually happens when people are expensive. Compared to the rest of the train, its operators aren't that expensive. Besides, modern train protection systems like LZB in Germany actually allow for automatic operation. It is seldom used in that capacity because it is not available on all the railroads, just on some lines that allow speeds higher than (in case of Germany) 160 kph. Autopilot is used on these tracks, though.

For one, unionized train personnel has a lot of power by the threat of striking. I once talked to an engineer doing railway systems design. He told me that they have to tread very carefully when introducing any technology that might appear to take away the autonomy of the driver.

Another thing is that a train driver is supposed to be able to deal with hardware malfunctioning, maybe even getting out to move a stuck switch.

You mention trains, because they're 'much simpler to predict'. There is some truth to this, same with drone aircraft - fewer obstacles to worry about, orders of magnitude less clutter.

Thing is, an AI train system still has to worry about things next to the rails, because they might intersect with the train by the time the train gets there. There's still 'random events in an open terrain' to worry about, it's just that the possible AI responses are much more limited - increase throttle, decrease throttle,

You are absolutely right. Those Google cars currently tooling around the country are purely imaginary. As are that other company's that can drive F-1 cars around Nürburgring in the pouring rain with professional-grade lap times(IIRC). The technology is already pretty much there, one more order-of-magnitude improvement and it will be pretty unquestionably superior to human drivers in all but the most contrived of corner-cases. After that the question is just cost and public acceptance.

"That the automobile has practically reached the limit of its development is suggested by the fact that during the past year no improvements of a radical nature have been introduced."--Scientific American, January 2, 1909

I agree on the general principle of "just because fancy tech happened before doesn't mean every wishful idea will be achieved" (e.g. faster-than-light travel) --- but self-driving cars aren't an exotic future possibility outside the present domain of human knowledge. They're working prototypes cruising around today, and doing a pretty good job of it. At this point, there's a big burden of proof to establish why they won't become common, rather than whether they might be possible in theory.

I'm actually delaying buying a new car until I can get one that can drive for me. I mean door to door. I can see this as viable in the next 2-3 years, with me able to afford it in a couple more after that.:) As my current repair bills are far lower than a car note would be, I'm quite happy to keep fixing the minor bit that falls off and keep this baby on the road a few more years. So yeah, I think it is going to be a reality. Soon. The hard problems are basically solved. All that remains is establish

So, the horseless carriage was never invented, because the motor is the horse? Rather, "driver" has, in common meaning, indicated the person controlling the car; and, if you see a car coming down the street towards you without a person at the wheel, you think "holy shit, that car has no driver!" (just like someone might have thought "holy shit, that carriage has no horse!").

Who said all cars would be driverless? More likely, drivered cars will go the way of the horse-ful carriage: a specialty item for enthusiasts off the major highways. And, why do you assume there's anything that will limit driverless cars to the 0.01%? In mass-production mode, there's nothing overly expensive needed for a driverless car --- a few cameras and scanners (which are mainly pricey now due to low production, rather than fundamental materials/manufacturing barriers), plus some clever software (which

Indeed. Once self driving cars become pervasive, they should be cheaper than today's cars: The accident rate is predicted to fall by at least a factor of ten, allowing acceptable safety levels with lighter material and smaller engines. Insurance rates will also be far lower.

This reminded me: Who will buy the insurance? For example, in the UK apparently the actuary tables are messed up enough when it comes to young teens that it's often cheaper to buy a new car where the manufacturer covers the first X years of insurance than it is to buy an equivalent used car and insure it.

It might not work in the regulatory framework of the USA as it currently stands, but if you drop insurance costs to roughly 1/10th of what they are now, combined with no more variable driver records, I co

Well, we've got the Roomba. And driverless cars do potentially present a lot of advantages. They also seem to be fairly practical, and would probably become moreso if the industry settles on standards for car to car communication. The biggest issues are those of the infrastructure, both legal and physical, being tuned towards the human drivers we've grown accustomed to.

See, this is the thoughtless sort of legislation that makes the world an awful place to live. I immediately see your tax as an incentive to hardwire the horn on. I pay at most $.1 per trip in horn tax, and still get to use it as much as I like.

I don't know what's wrong with the humor centers of my brain lately but I can't tell which one of you are joking. I thought Bill was but your comment falls into that category of sounding so insane that many would take it seriously. I'm so confused!

But then manufacturers will offer Free Nights and Weekend Honking, and contracts for 1000 honks per month (minimum 2 yr contract). Eventually, we'll get some good prepaid honks, but they won't always be as up to date as contract horns.

After 5 years, some provider will offer unlimited honking as part of their standard contract at lower than competitor's prices, but you'r car will only operate on limited access roadways and your horn will be bufered through the network with random failures to deliver horn notifications in a timely manner and occasionall complete loss of horn notifications. Subscribers will point at the low prices as evidence of better than expected service, impressively inovative and the customer service representatives will be rated higher than any of the competition.

May I suggest you visit India some time, and experience the noise for yourself? The drivers there are completely undisciplined. People honk because everyone else honks. They honk to announce they're tailgating, they honk to announce they are moving left or right (calling it changing lanes would imply they cared about lanes), they honk to announce they're about to enter an intersection, and they honk if someone cuts them off; as it's the only way anyone drives, the honking is almost continuous. When I got back, the silence on Minnesota streets was remarkable. It was almost three weeks before I heard an actual horn honk in traffic.

People aren't compelled to push the button just because it's in front of them. People push it because they don't know any better.